


lost in the pages of self-made cages

by ceserabeau



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Red Room
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-22 01:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1571750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a chamber. Six feet by two feet by two feet. It’s covered with a glass lid that frosts a delicate white when cold is applied. It fits a man in it; you know this because they put you in it, time and time again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rewriting/renaming of part of my Teen Wolf Avengers AU. I originally wrote it for Cap 2 so figured I might as well post it this way too. Eventual Bucky/Steve
> 
> Title from MS MR's _Bones_

There is a chamber. Six feet by two feet by two feet. It’s covered with a glass lid that frosts a delicate white when cold is applied. It fits a man in it; you know this because they put you in it, time and time again.

It sits in a room with white-washed walls and a ceiling line with square tiles. There are doctors, two men and one woman, and always a handful of soldiers standing guard. No one ever speaks and so in silence, you steadily climb the steps to the chamber.

When you lower yourself into the space, the metal is cold beneath your hands. Lying on your back all you can see is the ceiling, the even lines stretching in all directions. It’s a familiar view, but not a comforting one.

Hands press against your jaw, your lips, and you open your mouth. They press a strap between your teeth and all you can taste is the sharp leather beneath your tongue.

“Begin,” a voice commands.

A clanking starts up, echoing around the chamber. Slowly the lid lowers over you until the tiles become blurred and the noise fades into the background. The temperature starts to dip and you shiver, your skin crawling as the chamber becomes icy, the glass frosting above you.

You lie still and wait for the pain.

-

“What is your name?” they ask.

You open your mouth to answer but stop short. There’s a name on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite remember it. It’s just out of your reach so you close your mouth, try to figure out what you’re missing.

“Your name is Yakov,” they say.

It sounds right. You roll the syllables around your mouth; they seem to fit and when you say it aloud everything clicks into place. You are Yakov, you are as cold as a Russian winter and just as deadly, you are a soldier – their soldier, the Winter Soldier.

“Yes,” you say and they all smile.

-

You wake up and go to Romania. You wake up and go to Japan. You wake up and go to Brazil.

-

There’s a dream you have, one you think you’ve had before. In it, you’re curled up in a hole in the ground, wrapped in blankets and burlap. It’s icy cold, a light snow falling, and you can’t feel your feet even through three pairs of socks. When you breathe out it turns to white mist in the air, hanging around your head like a cloud.

“Stop breathing,” the guy next to you says in a crisp English accent; “They’ll see where we are.”

“Won’t be any patrols out now,” you tell him. “Too damn cold, even for the Krauts.”

The guy rolls his eyes. “You keep saying that, but wait until you get up to take a piss. They’ve probably got you in their sights right now.”

You want to tell him that you’re too far back for any sniper to reach, but what you say instead is, “You’d miss me,” and flick a rock at the guy’s head.

The guy laughs and nudges you and you push back; the two of you tussle for a minute until a voice pipes up from a few feet away: “Will you two idiots cut it out?”

“Sorry, Cap,” the guy calls back, but he winks at you like you’re in on some kind of joke.

You fall silent after that and hunker down between the wall and the guy’s body. Your teeth are chattering and all you can smell are the beans the people in the next foxhole are eating. In the end, you just close your eyes and try to remember a time when you didn’t hate the cold.

-

There’s a girl. Her name is Natalia; or at least, that’s what they’ve named her. The trainers tell you that she is the next Black Widow, the legend reincarnated. To you, she seems too small, fragile, until she makes five perfect kill shots blindfolded.

She’s a fast learner, your little Natalia. It’s not hard to see why they’ve chosen her, the girl they’ve shaped in their perfect weapon. You hone her craft for them, teach her how to be a better weapon, how to be a better killer.

She asks you to teach her more: she leans up to press her lips to yours, and you push her back. She wants you – she might be a liar, but she’s not as subtle as she thinks she is – but you don’t find pleasure in children so you leave it to your trainers to teach her the art of seduction.

You do tease her though, give her nicknames. _Solnyshko_ is the one that irritates her the least so you stick with it, whisper it in her ear when you pin her down on the mats, into her hair when you wrap your arms around her to correct her stance.

It isn’t until your final day together that you give in, tangle a hand in her long red hair, tilt her head up to yours and presses your lips to hers. It’s electric and satisfying, too long denying the attraction that’s been building between you. There’s a moan rumbling through her chest when your trainers finally pull you apart.

“I’ll see you soon,” you promise, and pray that you won’t forget her when they put you in the ice again.

-

You wake up and go to Canada. You wake up and go to Belgium. You wake up and go to China.

-

In the chamber there is more than just ice. There are needles under your skin, in your brain. You know because you see them lined up before they slam the lid down, but when they let you out again there is nothing but the faint memory of pain dancing along your nerves.

Sometimes you open your eyes and find there are new memories. New tastes on your tongue, new feelings under your fingertips. Your body moves in ways that you’ve never practised and you know things you’ve never learnt.

Sometimes you open your eyes and find there are no memories. You are blank, void, nothing there but empty spaces. Sometimes you can’t even remember your own name.

No matter how you wake up, there are always orders and you follow them like the good soldier you are and never question them. It’s easy: find the target, raise the gun, shoot and leave. Until the day you’re in a clearing in the Black Forest, stalking the defector who thinks he’s going to get away with switching sides.

The trees tower over you like giants, a light mist rising from the forest floor to shroud them in a white haze. It makes it harder to see where the man is running, and the cold makes your arm ache where metal joins flesh.

It’s easy to get turned around in a forest like this. You think you’ve been in one before, this one, except back then it was 1943 and there were explosions and people shouting and bodies lying all over the ground. You stumble, turning left and right to look for someone: Jones, or maybe Morita; but there’s snow falling and your helmet is falling in your eyes and where the hell is E Company? There’s no backup and you can’t see, can’t shoot and –

Something cold and smooth presses into your skin and you snap back to a forest on a chilly fall evening. There’s a gun against your neck and what feels like a hole in your brain already.

“Not as good as the legend says,” the man says, breath tickling your hair. “I thought the Winter Soldier was better than this.”

Oh, but you are; you pull your knife as you turn and sink it into the man’s gut, slit him from stomach to neck. It’s messy, emotional, not protocol, but you’re fairly sure you’re about to have a breakdown so you just drag the body back to the waiting car.

When you get into the car, your handler turns a blank look on you. She doesn’t ask what happened, just waits.

You shrug at her. “He got the drop on me,” you say.

“Explain,” she demands.

“I had a flashback,” you say, and think of the feel of a M1903 Springfield in your hands and an explosion kicking dirt up into your face, “To the last time I was here.”

Your handler doesn’t frown, but it’s a close thing. “You’ve never been here before,” she tells you, and when she turns away unease settles in your belly.

It’s no surprise really when they put you on ice for a long time.

-

There’s a dream you have, one you think you’ve had before. In it, you’re knee deep in mud and your boots stick whenever you try to move. You’re surrounded by men in uniform; some are trying to cleaning their weapons, some are trying to sleep, some are trying not to cry.

“There’s something moving out there,” the man next to you murmurs, peering around the tree he’s standing behind.

“ _Don’t_ ,” you cry, but it’s too late. There’s the crack of a gun going off and the man’s toppling backwards, a bloody hole where his eye used to be.

Something splatters your uniform, your face. When you look down you’re covered in blood and it’s as red as the star you wear on his shoulder. There’s copper in your mouth and it tastes like fear and death and surrender.

-

You wake up and go to India. You wake up and go to England. You wake up and go to Australia.

-

You wake up and go to France. There’s a girl there with red hair and a bright, white smile: _Natalia_ , and you feel pleased that you still remember her face, her name.

Under the Eiffel Tower you kiss her for the first time, make love to her in a studio apartment on the fifth floor. She is older now, twenty-two she says, but she still looks the same, youthful and beautiful.

“You look the same too,” she says, and you know from the face that looks back from the mirror that she’s telling the truth.

You fall in love a little in that apartment in Paris. In between tracking your target and scoping out the location, you kiss and hold hands and go out to dinner. She whispers sweet nothings in your ear, and you call her Solnyshko like you used to. It makes your heart swell in your chest, something you’ve never felt before coursing through your veins when you tuck a long strand of fiery hair behind her ear.

You want to blame it for why you don’t pull the trigger, but it’s more than that. Lying on your front with an eye pressed to the scope, belly cold from the roof, brings something back to you: another wood, your stomach pressed against a mossy rock, rifle in hand. A voice says shoot, kill, now, but you’ve got your Captain in your sights not the enemy so you wait and wait and –

Natalia unloads two into the Captain’s head and when he hits the ground it’s not the Captain, it’s your target.

“It was a mistake,” you say later, thinking of the icy chill you can never escape. “Don’t report it.”

She shakes her head at you, swiping the cloth down the counter in the kitchen to get rid of your prints. “I already have,” she says.

Your stomach drops, fear and adrenaline spiking suddenly. Your first reaction is to flee, heading straight for the door, but Natalia puts her shoulder into your stomach and tackles you to the floor. It’s bloody and brutal; you don’t want to hurt her, just want to get out, but she’s as ruthless as ever, so beautifully efficient it’s hard to not admire her skill.

She puts a jolt of electricity into the place where scar tissue meets cold metal and the pain sends you tumbling into oblivion.

-

“Welcome back,” they say, “You slept a long time.”

-

There’s a dream you have, one you think you’ve had before. In it, you’re standing in a long corridor, dark and gloomy, and there’s a boy being beaten up at the end of it. The other kids are kicking at him and calling him names, and you feel a sudden jolt of sympathy for the boy.

“Hey,” you shout, even though you want to run because ten to one are never good odds even for someone like you, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

The ringleader turns and gives you a stink eye. “Get the hell outta here,” he snarls.

You charge at them instead. The kids don’t look too impressed, but you have a reputation for fighting hard and dirty so when you start throwing punches they get with the programme and scatter.

When they’ve all disappeared, you look down and see that the boy has managed to prop himself up against the wall. He’s breathing heavily and his hair is in complete disarray, but he’s not keeping quiet, not showing any fear or pain.

You watch him for a moment before you lean over with a hand outstretched. “Need some help?” you ask.

The boy glances up. “That depends if you’re going to hit me too,” he says, tilting his head to look at you.

You raise an eyebrow. “I’m not in the habit of kicking people when they’re down,” you tell the boy who laughs, loud in the still silence of the corridor. He has a bloody nose, but his teeth are blinding white when he smiles.

“I’m Steve,” the boy says, and reaches up to grasp your hand. “What’s your name?”


	2. Chapter 2

The Smithsonian is a strange museum, so big, so grand: so American. You didn’t mean to come here, but somehow you end up there, following a trail of familiar faces through city streets until you arrive at a place where a man with dark hair and bright eyes stares back at you from every wall.

His name is James Barnes, _Bucky_ , and he is long dead – and yet here you are wearing his face.

There’s a video playing, an endless loop of footage. You watch it in silence, caught between an old woman smelling of age and a group of giggling school children.

On screen Captain America frowns and laughs; he points, he poses; he is every bit the soldier you know him to be. The old woman nudges you: “So handsome,” she whispers, and winks.

He is, you can’t deny it. But the person who captures your interest is the man by his side. Tall, dark hair, a ready smile cast in black and white: Bucky Barnes, the best friend, the sidekick. Captain America thinks you and this man are one and the same, but you’re not, you can’t be.

In a forest somewhere the man tucks a rifle into the crook of his arm and it’s the same way you hold your own gun, steady and comfortable. He lights a cigarette and the way he cups the flame is the same way you have done, in the dark of the night when you couldn’t sleep. He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated, and you know the move, your hand twitching in your lap.

The woman nudges you again. “They were a good team,” she says. “Shame they couldn’t all come back to us.”

You give her the smile she expects, but it feels sharp in your mouth, ugly and wrong. You leave her there and find a bathroom, stare at the reflection in the mirror.

The man there has long, dark hair and a nose that looks like it might have been broken once upon a time; a strong jaw covered in stubble, furrowed brows, pale skin. His eyes are bright blue and wary, haunted.

Captain American called this man Bucky, but when you look in the mirror all you see is winter.

-

When you sleep – if you sleep – you dream of cold and darkness. Names and faces and feelings; nothing concrete, just old ghosts hanging around your head. The slick sensation of blood between your fingers, smeared across your palms. The taste of cotton candy, sweet and soft on your tongue. The acrid smell of burning metal and rubber, a car on fire. The feeling of air rushing past your face as you fall down, down, down.

You wake up on a bus somewhere down the I20 with a girl leaning over you. You have to fight with yourself to not put a knife through her throat.

“You were having a nightmare,” she says, softly, carefully. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” you tell her, pulling away from her gentle hands.

The girl raises an eyebrow, unconvinced, and you turn away to stare out the window as the hills roll by. You wonder how many times you’ll have to say it before it starts being true.

-

You’ve failed your mission. Normally there are punishments, things like electricity and hunger and cold, things like being strapped to a chair and having needles pushed into your brain.

But this time – this time there are no repercussions. There are no masters, no commanders; Hydra is preoccupied with its imminent defeat and no one is particularly concerned with the Winter Soldier as long as you don’t defect to the other side. For once you are allowed to slip away, a ghost in the night, leaving nothing behind.

There are many things you could do, but in the end there’s only one logical choice: go after Hydra, and the rage swells until it pounds in your blood, the thirst for vengeance turning your vision red.

There are three bases in Mexico, more further south. You know their names, their locations, and more across the Atlantic, across the Pacific. But these ones are close, within your reach, and it’s easy for you to break down their doors and drag their scientists kicking and screaming into the night.

No one can tell you anything, no matter how much you hurt them, but the files you find buried deep in their systems tell you plenty.

The Winter Soldier, a man made of cold and ice, created from the bruised, broken body of an American soldier fought buried in the snow. The name hits somewhere low in the gut: James Barnes, born 1918 in Brooklyn, New York. The same man you saw in the museum, the same name that Captain America called you.

But even with the information, folders and folders and folders of it, it still doesn’t make sense to you. You don’t understand how you can be one man when everything is telling you you’re another.

You are Yakov, you are Russian, you are Winter – but every day Bucky Barnes’ face stares back at you from the mirror, unchanging and unending, and you try not to shake out of your skin.

-

Eventually SHIELD catch up with you in a shitty motel where Costa Rica blurs into Panama. You think about disappearing when you first see their shadows moving behind the blinds, but you can’t find any energy left to run. In the end you let them break down the door and handcuff you so they feel safe.

They drag you back to New York, to an interrogation room lit by a single light bulb. The walls are bare, plaster over concrete; no windows, a single door. They disable your arm but leave it where it is, bind your hands and ankles with chains you can’t seem to break.

Captain America comes to see you, Steve Rogers in the flesh. When he’s not in the stars and stripes he looks like a man, human and weak. You wonder if it would be easier to kill him out of the uniform. It must show on your face because Rogers flinches slightly under your gaze.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks, leaning against the wall, quietly watching.

You can put a name to the face – _Steve_ , whispered in the dark of bedrooms and bunks and barracks – and the knowledge makes your hands shake and your heart beat double-time in your chest. It’s right there on your tongue, trying to force its way out, but you keep it trapped behind your teeth.

“You’re at a SHIELD base,” Rogers tells you. “Do you remember what happened?”

You take in the room. This is an interrogation room: dark, dingy, bare walls, no windows, lit by a single bulb. You’ve been in many before, but only rarely on this side of things. Rogers looks like he’ll be an interesting interrogator; you wonder if he’ll lead with his fists.

Instead he comes close to you, crouches down to he can pin you with his gaze. “Answer me,” he says; “Bucky, please,” and you never thought you’d hear Captain America beg.

You don’t answer; instead you take the time to test your bonds, their limits. When you look up again, he’s watching you, something desperate and defeated in his eyes.

“I want to help you,” he says quietly. His hand reaches out to touch yours, fingers brushing against yours gently. “I want to make it right.”

You frown at him. You expected violence, the feel of fists against your face. This, this gentle touch, these quiet words: they don’t make sense.

You might speak eight languages, but compassion is foreign to you.

-

When you sleep – if you sleep – you dream of cities you’ve never been to.

You dream about the dry heat of Sydney. The humidity of Bangkok that made your clothes stick to your skin and your arm start to rust. The two weeks in Rio when it poured with rain and you break two ribs falling off a roof because it’s so slick with water.

You dream about the noodles you ate in Beijing. The curry in Mumbai so hot you couldn’t taste anything for a week. The falafel in Cairo that gave you food poisoning.

You dream about the strange accents of Johannesburg, the smog of Los Angeles, the smell of salt water on the air in Hong Kong. The drunk college girls tripping over their own feet in Cabo; the hookers who stroked your arms in Amsterdam.

You dream about the boy in Brooklyn. The apartment you shared, overlooking a street full of cars that stank of kerosene. The old woman who lived upstairs who liked to stomp on the floorboards in the middle of the night.

When you wake up, you can never tell what was real and what was just a dream.

-

“What do you remember about the Red Room? About Hydra?” an agent asks you.

You say nothing and the agent raises one carefully manicured eyebrow. She’s wearing a black suit and a white shirt and a black tie. You tilt your head at her, wonder why everyone at SHIELD always looks like they’re going to a funeral.

The agent drums her fingers on the table. “What is your name?” she asks, her tone carefully, calculatingly blank.

You don’t have an answer for her. Your name is Bucky. Your name is Sergeant James Barnes. Your name is Yakov. Your name is the Winter Soldier.

Truth be told, you’re still a little confused on the details.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she says, and her voice is edging towards frustrated now, “Captain Rogers assured us of your complete cooperation. I imagine he’d be very disappointed if you didn’t oblige.”

You force yourself to not roll your eyes. The agent looks slightly disturbed at your silence.

“If you don’t cooperate,” she says, voice low, “We’ll be forced to bring in a specialist.”

You lean back in the chair and laugh.

-

Natalia visits you. “Yasha,” she says, voice soft and coaxing, the way she used to say your name in the darkness as she pressed kisses to your lips. “They’re saying you won’t talk.”

You watch her watching you, two predators trying to figure out who the real prey is. Her lips are stretched in a thin, tight line and her back is ramrod straight. Her hair is as bright as ever, but her eyes are dull and dark.

She sighs and leans close, brushes your long hair back with a careful finger. “They asked me to _interrogate_ you,” she says, “And we both know what that means.”

You don’t flinch away from the soft touch of her fingers against your skin, or when she drags a sharp nail across your cheek. You just keep watching, steady, blank, and she blinks first.

“I’m not going to do it,” she tells you, sitting back down. “I know it wouldn’t make a difference.” She moves a little in the chair: uncomfortable, nervous. “They’re going to try recalibration on you. Do you know what that is?”

You tilt your head a little, surveying her. She must be tired, exhausted, if she’s asking questions like that.

“I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding apologetic in the slightest; “Of course you know. It won’t hurt but it might help you to remember.”

There’s that word again: _help_. Like they’re doing you a favour by rooting around in your brain. You can feel your lips pulling back, you teeth flashing in a snarl.

Natalia tilts her head, curious. “Does it scare you?” she asks quietly. “They’re not like Hydra, Yasha. They’re not like the Red Room. They won’t hurt you.”

You hold in your snort. As much as she, as SHIELD will deny it, violence is a part of them, so intertwined with them that there cannot be one without the other.

Natalia sighs as if she knows what you’re thinking, and she shakes her head, hair dancing like leaves falling in the autumn. “You’re running out of choices,” she says, and her voice is beyond weary. “If you don’t start playing along it’s not going to end well for you.”

-

They try the recalibration on you, cognitive realignment to put the memories of being Bucky Barnes back into your brain. You don’t bother to fight them. It would be easy enough – SHIELD is too weak now to pose much of a threat – but the time for that is long past.

So you let them strap you down, let them slide the needles into you, and you scream yourself into unconsciousness over and over and over again.

Rogers comes to see you after each session. The first time he’s apologetic and hopeful, carefully cleans the puncture marks from your skin. The third time he’s still apologetic but less hopeful, making tea to soothe your throat and asking carefully how you feel. The sixth time he’s still apologetic but no longer hopeful, lurking in the doorway to watch you tend your own wounds and put yourself to bed.

After the ninth time, Rogers just sits down in the spare chair and frowns at you. “The doctors say you’re resisting it,” he says angrily. “Why won’t you let them help you? Why won’t you just remember?”

The truth is: you don’t want to remember. Whatever it was that made you dive into the churning river after a man you didn’t know, whatever it was that made your chest hurt like someone had put a knife through your heart – you want those things to stay dead and buried.

But as always the words stick in your throat, and you just watch Rogers in silence. His eyes, those big blue eyes, are ringed by dark circles, and there’s something fragile in the line of his shoulders. He looks weak; he looks breakable.

“You want to keep doing this, is that it?” he snaps when he catches you looking. “You like what they’re doing? You like getting hurt?”

A stupid question, you think, and Captain America is not a stupid man. He’s provoking then, trying to get a rise out of you. You think of the things you could do in response, to scare him, to make him back off: snarling, screaming. You could fight; you could kill.

But it’s the silence, the stillness that seems to scare him the most. So you keep doing just that, and you can see the way Rogers startles, shrinks backwards as if struck.

“Please, Buck,” he says, barely above a whisper now. “Please come back to me.”

When you say nothing, he gets up and leaves, slamming the door behind him.

-

When you sleep – if you sleep – you dream of a skinny boy with black eye and a split lip. You’re in an alley in Brooklyn, behind some diner, and the boy is panting, hair in disarray and blood welling up on his mouth. You want to lean in and lick it away but you don’t, you just put a hand out and pull him to his feet.

“Gotta stop doing this,” you tell him, and the boy laughs, beautiful and echoing.

“I had him on the ropes,” he says, brushing the dirt off his pants.

“I believe you,” you say and the boy’s answering smile is blinding.

He glances around quickly: left, right, before his hand slides under the lapel of your jacket and he’s leaning up to touch his mouth to yours. It’s just a press of lips, over too quickly, and when the boy pulls back his eyes are bright and beautiful.

You lick your lips: they taste like salt and copper, and it’s wonderful on your tongue.

-

A day comes that you have been waiting for, the day Natalia was talking about: _it’s not going to end well_ , and you have definitely not been playing along. 

They take you to a new room: no windows, padded walls. Part cell, part sanatorium; you’re surprised there’s no straight jacket included. They strap you down though, cuffs at the wrists and ankles, and you wonder what part comes next, if it’s more needles or the long-awaited violence or something altogether more final.

What you don’t expect is Rogers, looming over you, holding something that shines bright, searing your eyes. “Do you know what this is?” he asks, holding it up for you to see.

You peer at it, the strange glowing cube, at Rogers, the sharp lines of his face. In the blue glow his eyes are electric.

“It’s going to help,” he tells you, stepping forward. “This will bring you back.”

You start thrashing now, all the fury, all the rage you’ve been denying for so long suddenly rushing over you. There’s a noise tearing its way up your throat, a horrible roar, but before it can rip its way out into the air, Rogers is on you, pressing the cube down into your chest.

“Remember who you are,” he says, and the world goes black

-

You wake up and everything is dim, the curtains pulled shut against the bright light outside. It reminds you of your apartment in Brooklyn, when you’d draw the blinds against the summer sun so that Steve wasn’t blinded while he was drawing.

But this isn’t your apartment, this is a hospital somewhere and you’re not watching Steve draw, you’re lying in bed, hooked up to a dozen machines, all of them bleeping steadily around you.

You can’t remember the last time you were in a hospital. Maybe in France, after Steve pulled you out of that lab; or maybe after the Russians pulled you out of the ice, when they were trying to put you back together.

Here, now, everything hurts, every part of you throbbing worse than you can ever remember. The worst is your head, a great angry pain that thrums, pounds, sets you on fire.

You know why, can feel it deep down in your bones: you remember everything, every little detail from beginning to end. It’s all there, every memory back where it belongs. Your first instinct is that it’s all fake, implanted; Hydra, the Red Room fiddling around in your brain again. But these ones are different, more like flashbacks.

Kids in an orphanage curled together late at night; last apartment on the right on the third floor; a boy in an alley with a black eye and a bloody nose. Wartime, trekking across Europe, guns at the ready. A long, long fall.

Then after: a chamber full of ice, needles in your brain. The click when your arm is slotted into place. Blood, blood everywhere, your hands, your clothes, and over it snow like static colouring every scene.

The door opens and a head appears round it, too dark to make out the features. “Hey,” the person says, and comes in. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

You squint at them, confused. You know the voice, the outline of the body against the curtains, but you can’t tell who it is in the low light.

You take the chance to open your mouth, to work your tongue and your throat, to make a noise. No words, just a garbled sound, rusty and sharp like nails on a chalkboard, but the figure is at your side in a second.

“Easy,” they say, hands gently cradling your head, bringing a cup of water to your mouth to sip.

When the cup is set back down, the person flicks the lamp on, and in the sudden light you see: blonde hair, blue eyes, a face you’ve known for nearly a hundred years.

“Hi,” you croak out.

Above you, Steve smiles and it feels like coming home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So part two took me ten months to finish, how long for part three.


End file.
